Thor #332
Blood of a Goddess!
Don Blake has been brought down to Chicago police headquarters to answer some questions about the disappearance of Jane Foster. The officers there are interested to learn about Foster’s whereabouts as she has been missing for quite some time and they know that she was last seen with him. The lead investigator seems fairly convinced that Don Blake killed Jane because she rejected his romantic advances. Blake finds these accusations preposterous, but cannot tell them the truth since it will compromise his secret identity.
That’s when he learns that the man who has accused him of being involved in Jane’s disappearance is her former lover, Keith Kincaid.[1] What they don’t know is that Don Blake is merely the mortal guise of Thor, the god of thunder, and the reason for Jane Foster’s disappearance is that — in order to save Jane’s life — her essence was merged with the goddess Sif. While Jane was the dominant personality at the start, Sif quickly took over the first time they returned to Asgard. Jane hasn’t been seen since leaving Don to wonder what really happened to her.[2] Since they have no evidence proving that Blake was involved in any kind of foul play he is released without charges but the Detective Timpano warns him that he’ll be coming by to visit on the regular. After partying company with his lawyer, Don ducks into a nearby alley so he can change into Thor and try and get to the bottom of this mystery.
Elsewhere in the city, Sif is out shopping when she rushes to the aid of a child that has wandered out into oncoming traffic. Stopping a car with her phenomenal strength, Sif is thanked for the save by the boy’s mother and the driver. That’s when she notices the driver has a newspaper with has a front page story about the murder accusations being made against Thor’s mortal identity. Realizing that this could mean trouble, Sif heads back to Don Blake’s apartment.
Meanwhile, Thor has arrived at the hospital in New York where Jane Foster was staying before she was merged with Sif. There he hopes to find the Runestaff of Kamo Tharnn, which was left behind after Sif saved Jane’s life. It was last seen in the possession of the hospital’s head custodian who regretfully informs Thor that it vanished not long after Jane was released from the hospital. Thor then heads to Avengers Mansion where he meets with his teammates Captain Marvel and Starfox. He tells them that he is searching for the Runestaff and to keep him informed if the team happens to come across it in their travels.
That evening, in an abandoned Chicago church, a cult that worships the Lord Vampire Dracula have succeeded in reviving their master with a mystical ceremony. Thanking his followers for giving him renewed strength, Dracula believes true immortality is within his grasp. Turning into a bat, Dracula flies off into the night to find a fresh victim to feed from. He happens to pass over Thor as he returns home and meets with Sif on the rooftop of his apartment. He tells Sif about how he is seeking to find out what happened to the Runestaff. Unfortunately, the goddess doesn’t know where it might have gone either. As the two gods head into the apartment below, Dracula senses that Sif is a goddess and decides to make her his next victim.
First, the lord of the vampires needs to feed and he begins stalking a trio of high school students by turning into mist and following them. When the three kids realize that they are being followed by the fog, Dracula resumes his human form and quickly hypnotizes the teenagers before feeding on their blood. The exsanguinated corpses of the teens are later found and brought to the hospital. The following morning, Donald Blake is called in to examine the strange puncture marks on the necks of the victims. Although they note that they are similar to a vamprie’s bite, nobody wants to seriously entertain the idea that the mythical monsters are real. However, the kids aren’t the only ones killed in such a fashion, as the coroner took in another victim the night before who died from extreme blood loss as well. Don bumps into Detective Timpano who gives him the third degree. Still, Blake decides to change into Thor and offer to help Timpano out on his investigation. Thor’s assistance is welcomed by the police.
On the following evening, Dracula awakens and is looking forward to feeding upon Sif and have her godly blood running through his veins. However, he decides to put this off for another night when his worshipers asks him to be involved in their latest conjourin’s.
The evening after this, Thor leaves Sif sleeping bed and goes out to investigate the strange murders. He wants to get the aid of Doctor Strange to try and learn the location of the Runestaff, but before heading to New York he decides to check in at the hospital. There he finds Detective Timpano and his men outside as they received a call that the first victim’s body had been stolen from the morgue. They soon get a radio report of a man matching the cadaver’s description attacking a woman in a nearby alley. Thor and the cops head to that location and discover that the first victim has become a vampire. Thor easily destroys the monster by striking it with Mjolnir. Since the hammer is a religious symbol it causes the vampire to disintegrate on contact. Fearing that the three dead teenagers will also rise from the dead, Thor learns that they have already been buried in a nearby cemetery.
This turns out to be the cemetery cared for by Polowski, the former squire to the Crusader.[3] There, Thor saves Polowski from the three teenaged vampires. When the undead youths try to turn into bats and flee, Thor slays them all with Mjolnir. With the immediate danger dealt with, Thor then heads off to New York to get aid from the Sorcerer Supreme. While Thor is gone, Dracula arrives outside Don Blake’s apartment and beacons Sif to invite him in. Half asleep and thinking that it is Thor speaking to her, Sif gives invitation allowing the vampire lord to enter the apartment. Resuming human form, Dracula bends down to feast on Sif’s immortal blood, pronouncing her as his slave.
Recurring Characters
Thor, Sif, Dracula, Darkholders, Captain Marvel, Starfox. Polowski
Continuity Notes
The lead investigator notices that Don Blake and Keith Kincaid look so much alike that they could be related. This is because, as explained in Thor #415, Odin based Thor’s Don Blake identity on Kincaid’s likeness.
This bit of exposition goes through Jane Foster’s long history with Thor:
It briefly explains that Jane was Thor’s mortal love since he returned in the Modern Age. This was first seen in Journey into Mystery #84. However, Odin forbade this romance back in issue #90 of that series.
Thor did manage to successfully petition Odin to consider a marriage. Odin the tested Jane’s worthiness to become a god and she failed it spectacularly. Jane was then sent to Earth with all memory of Thor erased and she soon went to work with Keith Kincaid. See Thor #136.
More recently, Jane was driven to near suicide by the Dweller-in-Darkness and given up all will to live as seen in Thor #230-231.
In order to save Jane’s life, Sif recovered the Runestaff of Kamo Tharnn and used it to merge with Jane to save her life. See Thor #235-236.
Jane remained with Don Blake for a time until she accompanied Thor to Asgard in Thor #249. When she grabbed Sif’s sword, Jane swapped places with her. The last time Jane has been seen was in Thor Annual #9 when a trip to the Dark Dimension caused the pair to swap places again.
We’ll later learn in Thor #334-335 that Jane has since been trapped in the Runestaff of Kamo Tharn pretty much the entire time she’s been absent.
Topical References
The scene of the teenagers walking home from school is chocked full of topical references:
One of the students asks the others if they want to stay up all night playing Atari. The Atari 2600 and 5600 were the popular video game consoles at the time this story was published. These machines have long since been discontinued and become obsolete. Likewise, Atari had gotten out of the console business in the 1990s. However, at the time of this writing (October 2021) Atari did release a crowdsource console that plays PC games, however this was a limited run that has hit production snags due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of the girls likes to watch General Hospital, the longest running soap-opera on television. It is still on the air as I write this. However, this should be considered a topical reference since it is a real-world television show and could be cancelled at sometime in the future like other long running soap-operas like One Life to Live and All My Children.
One of the boys offers to record General Hospital on his Betamax video tape recorder. Betamax was an early video format that was produced by Sony first released in 1975. It eventually fell out of home-video use, losing the early format wars against the cheaper to produce VHS, despite its inferior quality. Betamax continued to be used professionally for television and film productions until Sony discontinued the format in 2002 in favor of digital formats that were quickly becoming the norm.
Lastly, the three youths stalked by Dracula comment that the mist reminds them of a scene out of Friday the 13th. When this story was published the popular franchise was still in its infancy having released three films in 1980, 1981, and 1982. At the time of this writing that franchise has been dead in the water after its 12th installment in 2009, partially due to the an ongoing legal battle over the rights to the original story.